








八公山上,草木皆兵 is a Chinese idiom (chengyu) meaning “to be in extreme panic, imagining every bush and tree to be an enemy soldier; to be overly suspicious and see danger everywhere”. Literally, “On Mount Bagong, every bush and tree is a soldier”.
During the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Former Qin king Fu Jian intended to conquer the Eastern Jin.
The Eastern Jin chancellor Xie An dispatched Xie Shi as the grand commander of the expedition, who divided his forces into three routes to attack the Qin army.
Fu Jian ascended Shouyang City and was somewhat intimidated by the orderly formation of the Jin army.
The Jin army then used a stratagem to encircle and attack Fu Jian's Qin army. The Qin army suffered a crushing defeat, and during their panicked retreat, they saw the shadows of trees and bushes on Mount Bagong, mistakenly believing them to be pursuing soldiers.

Chinese and English fill-in vocabulary worksheets
Open the tool →
Choose character parts and animate their colors, together or in stroke order
Open the tool →
Turn a Chinese character or sentence into a GIF or MP4
Open the tool →
Printable tracing sheets with a QR learning companion
Open the tool →八公山上,草木皆兵 (bā gōng shān shàng , cǎo mù jiē bīng) is a Chinese idiom (chengyu) meaning “to be in extreme panic, imagining every bush and tree to be an enemy soldier; to be overly suspicious and see danger everywhere”.
八公山上,草木皆兵 is pronounced bā gōng shān shàng , cǎo mù jiē bīng in Mandarin Chinese.
Literally, 八公山上,草木皆兵 means “on Mount Bagong, every bush and tree is a soldier”. It is used to mean “to be in extreme panic, imagining every bush and tree to be an enemy soldier; to be overly suspicious and see danger everywhere”.
八公山上,草木皆兵 comes from a classical Chinese story dating back to ancient China. The full story is on this page.
八公山:在安徽淮西市西。将八公山上的草木,都当作是士兵。形容极度惊恐,疑神疑鬼。